Well, to go "ad hominem" for a few moments, the Democrats and the Non-Fox Media have chosen the apparently successful public relations strategy of evaluating every tax plan on the basis of whether under any circumstances it could be said to benefit someone with a high income.
When you buy into this "thinking" it is, more than anything else, an indication of your own failure to grasp reality.
Regardless of anything else - regardless of who is elected president this November - the tax code will be revised in some way and 90% of Americans will be paying more in Federal Income Tax than they are now. IT CANNOT BE OTHERWISE! Half of America PAYS NO FEDERAL INCOME TAX! How can this possibly go on? How can anyone in their right mind deem this ridiculous situation to be "fair."
And yet it is the logical evolution when every single tax initiative for the past 30 years is evaluated (stupidly, I might say) on the basis of whether it gives a break to The Poor. Well for ****'s sake, if you reduce taxes for low income people every five years, and they don't pay much to start with, then eventually none of them are going to be paying anything. Which is absurd.
And on the other end, dare I mention that a "graduated tax code" is the essence of unfairness. The people earning more are already paying more due to their higher incomes, but the effect is geometric when you piggy-back a higher rate.
And now we have half of America believing that Warren Buffet pays less in FIT than his secretary, when the fact is he pays thousands of times more than she does, but because of how he has structured his wealth, he is paying taxes at a lower NET RATE. So he his paying tens of millions in taxes and half of America (mainly the catatonically stupid, i.e., the Democrats) believe he is NOT PAYING ENOUGH!
Any prospective tax plan MUST be evaluated on how it spreads the burden of the cost of running the Government, and secondarily, whether it provides sufficient incentives for wealth creation. When wealthy individuals and businesses spend 90% of their tax planning effort in devising ways of avoiding taxes that they consider to be unreasonable, then EVERYBODY LOSES. They have the ability to shift income, resources, and investments in a way that the common wage earner cannot understand. This is why when the top marginal tax rate went from over 70% to under 40% during the Reagan years, the total paid in INCREASED. Because the top earners no longer thought that the rate was confiscatory.
Only a fool buys into the bullshit principle that if any tax change benefits the top earners then it is "evil." It is yet another indication of how totally compromised the Non-Fox Media has become. They parrot the Democrat party line even when they themselves may not be conscious of it.